Heinrich Taaffe

Heinrich Graf Taaffe after a photograph ( Wiener Salonblatt , 1893)

Heinrich (Graf) Taaffe (born May 22, 1872 in Innsbruck ; † July 25, 1928 in Vienna ) was an Austrian landowner and son of the Imperial Prime Minister Eduard Graf Taaffe . His family was of Irish descent and he held the titles of Viscount Taaffe and Baron Ballymote in the Peerage of Ireland .

While he held his title of Earl of Taaffe from birth, he did not receive the Irish title (as the 12th Viscount) until after his father's death in 1895.

Heinrich Graf Taaffe married Maria Magda Fuchs in Vienna on May 22, 1897; the son Eduard Karl Richard Taaffe (1898–1967) emerged from this connection. After the death of his first wife on January 3, 1918, he concluded a second marriage with Aglaë Isescu on June 2, 1919 in Ellischau ( Bohemia ).

During the First World War , Count Heinrich Taaffe, as an Austrian citizen, sided with the Central Powers . Since he thus "carried arms against England", his British nobility titles and rights were stripped from him by order of King George V of Great Britain and Ireland on March 28, 1919, whereby the Titles Deprivation Act of 1917 formed the legal basis. In addition to Count Taaffe as the 12th Viscount Taaffe of Corren and Baron of Ballymote , three other persons were affected by this law: Ernst August, Crown Prince of Hanover as Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale , Earl of Armagh and Prince of Great Britain and Ireland , and Duke Ernst August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg as Prince of Great Britain and Ireland and Duke Carl Eduard von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha as Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence, Baron Arklow and Prince of Great Britain and Ireland . Under the Titles Deprivation Act, the male heirs of these persons have the right to ask the British Crown to reinstate them, but the Taaffe never made use of it.

After the end of the monarchy in Austria-Hungary , the parliament of the newly formed state of German Austria decided on April 3, 1919 to abolish the nobility. As a result of this nobility annulment law , Taaffe also lost the right to use his title of count, which came from the Holy Roman Empire .

With his son, Richard (1898–1967), the line of Counts and Viscounts Taaffe finally died out in the male line.

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